The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (12 page)

Rupert went and sat on his bed. ‘Hallo, Nev.’

Neville inclined his head. His hair stood in tufts on his head like grass. He battled with another interminable wheezing gasp, and said, ‘Air – won’t go in.’ There was another pause and he added in a dignified manner, ‘’Stremely difficult.’ His eyes were bright with fear.

‘I bet it is. Like a story?’

He nodded and was again racked; Rupert wanted to take him in his arms but that wouldn’t help the poor little devil.

‘Right, remember the rules? Every time I stop, you have to breathe. Once upon a time there was a wicked witch and the only person she loved in the world was a small, black and green – ’ he stopped and somehow they both got through the hiatus ‘ – dinosaur called Staggerflanks. Staggerflanks slept in a dinosaur basket that was made of holly and thistles because he liked rubbing his back against the prickles. He had snails and porridge for breakfast, beetles and rice pudding for lunch and – ’ It was, surely a little better? ‘ – grass snakes and jelly for supper.’ He’d got him now; he was listening more than he was afraid. ‘On his birthday, when he was a mere six feet long . . .’

Twenty minutes later he stopped. Neville, still wheezing a bit but breathing regularly, had dropped off. Rupert covered him, then bent to kiss his warm, sweaty forehead. Asleep, he looked startlingly like Isobel – the same bumpy forehead with fine blue veins at the sides, the same sharply defined mouth . . . He put his hand over his eyes as his last picture of her recurred: lying in their bed exhausted from her thirty-hour labour, trying to smile at him and bleeding to death. Afterwards he had tried to hold her, but she had become a thing – a dead weight in his arms, uncomforting and gone.

‘You got him off nicely.’ Ellen was warming some milk in a pan on the landing. She wore her bulky plaid dressing gown and her hair in a yellowish white pigtail down her back.

‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’

‘You don’t have to do without me, Mr Rupert.’

‘Is that for Clary?’

‘I must settle her. She’s a naughty girl. If I’ve told her once I’ve told her a dozen times she can come in to me quietly – there’s no call to wake him up and frighten the poor little mite with her carry-on. You’re not the only pebble on the beach, I told her, but she will work herself up. Still, that’s life, isn’t it?’ she finished, pouring the milk into a mug with ducks on it. It was what she always said about anything difficult or bad.

‘I’ll take it in to her. You get to bed. Get your beauty sleep.’

‘Right, then, I’ll say good night.’

He took the mug and went into the children’s room. A night light was burning by Clary’s bed. Clary was sitting hunched with her arms round her knees.

‘Ellen’s made you some nice hot milk,’ he said.

Without taking it, she said, ‘You’ve been ages in there. What were you doing?’

‘Telling him a story. Helping him to breathe.’

‘He’s stupid. Anyone can breathe.’

‘People with asthma find it very difficult to breathe. You know that Clary, don’t be unkind.’

‘I’m not. It’s not my fault I had a nightmare.’

‘Of course it isn’t. Drink your milk.’

‘So that you can go downstairs and leave me. Anyway, I don’t like hot milk – it gets horrible skin.’

‘Drink it up to please Ellen.’

‘I don’t want to please Ellen, she doesn’t like me.’

‘Clary, don’t be silly. Of course she does.’

‘The person it is
knows
whether people like them or not. Nobody likes me enough.
You
don’t like me.’

‘That’s nonsense. I love you.’

‘You said I was unkind and you said I was silly.’

She was glaring at him; he saw the sticky marks of tears on her round, freckled face, and said more gently, ‘I can still love you. Nobody is perfect.’

But instantly, and not looking at him, she muttered, ‘You’re perfect. I find you perfect.’ Her voice trembled and the milk slopped.

He picked the skin off the milk and ate it. ‘There. That shows you. I don’t like milk skin either.’

‘Daddy, I love you so much!’ She took a deep breath and drank all the milk down. ‘I love you as much as all the men in the world put together. I wish you were the King.’

‘Why do you wish that?’

‘Because then you’d be home all day. Kings are.’

‘Well, the holidays start tomorrow so I will be. Now, I’m going to tuck you up.’

She lay back, he kissed her, and she smiled for the first time. She took his hand and laid it against her cheek. Then she said, ‘But not the night times. I don’t be with you then.’

‘But every day,’ he said, wanting to end on a lighter note. ‘Good night, sleep tight.’

‘Mind the bugs don’t bite,’ she finished. ‘Daddy! could I have a cat?’

‘We’ll talk about that in the morning.’

As he shut the door, she said, ‘Polly has one.’

‘Good night,’ he said with bracing firmness.

‘Good night, darling Dad,’ she answered in quite a chirpy voice.

So that, he thought, as he made his way downstairs, was that – for the moment, at least. But as he reached his own bedroom door – still shut – he suddenly felt incredibly tired. She couldn’t have a cat because of Nev’s asthma, and that would turn out to be just one more thing that she held against him. He opened the bedroom door praying that Zoë would be asleep.

She wasn’t, of course. She was sitting up in bed, her bedjacket on her shoulders, doing nothing, waiting for him. He fumbled with his tie and had dropped it on top of his chest of drawers before she said, ‘You’ve been a long time.’ Her voice had the controlled quality that he had learned to dread.

‘Clary had a nightmare and woke Nev up and he had a rather bad attack. I’ve been getting him to sleep.’

He put his jacket on the back of a chair and sat on it to take off his shoes.

‘You know, I’ve been thinking,’ she said, in a voice false with consideration. ‘Don’t you think Ellen is getting a bit past it?’

‘Past what?’

‘Coping with the children. I mean – I know they’re not
easy
children, but she is supposed to be their nurse, after all.’

‘She
is
their nurse, and a jolly good one. She does everything for them.’

‘Not
everything
, darling. I mean, if she did everything you wouldn’t have had to get Neville to sleep, would you? Be reasonable.’

‘Zoë, I’m tired, I don’t feel like wrangling about Ellen.’

‘I’m not wrangling. I’m just pointing out that if you can’t ever have a single evening to yourself – and whenever we go out something like this always seems mysteriously to happen – she can’t be as marvellously competent as you seem to think!’

‘I’ve told you, I really don’t want to talk about this now – in the middle of the night. We’re both tired—’

‘Speak for yourself!’

‘All right, then. I’m tired—’

But it was too late: she was hell bent on a scene. He tried silence, she simply repeated that perhaps he had never thought what it was like for
her
– never feeling she had him to herself, not for a single minute. He argued and she sulked. He shouted at her and she burst into tears, sobbing until he couldn’t bear it and had to take her in his arms and soothe, and apologise, until, her green eyes swimming, she cried that he had no idea how much she loved him and held up her mouth – free now of the scarlet lipstick he never liked – to be kissed. ‘Oh, darling Rupert! Oh!’ and recognising her desire he felt his own, and kissed her and then couldn’t stop. Even after three years of marriage to her he was in awe of her beauty and paid tribute by pushing aside what else she was. She was very young, he would think again and again at the many times like this one: she would grow up, and he would refuse to consider what that might mean. It was only after he had made love to her, when she was tender and affectionate and altogether adorable, that he could say, ‘You’re a selfish little thing, you know,’ or, ‘You’re an irresponsible child. Life isn’t all beer and skittles.’ And she would look at him obediently and answer contritely, ‘I know I am. I know it isn’t.’ It was four o’clock when she turned on her side and he was free to sleep.

HOME PLACE 1937

Rachel Cazalet always woke early, but in summer, in the country, she woke with the dawn chorus. Then, in the silence that followed, she drank a cup of tea from the Thermos by her bed, ate a Marie biscuit, read another chapter of
Sparkenbroke
, which was all rather intense, she thought, though well written, and then, as the bright grey light began to fill the room (she slept with her curtains undrawn to get the maximum fresh air) making the light from her bedside seem a dirty yellow – almost squalid – she switched it off, got out of bed, put on her woolly dressing gown and her shapeless slippers (extraordinary the way in which they ended up looking the shape of broad beans) and crept along the wide silent passages and down three steps to the bathroom. This room, facing north, had walls in tongue-and-groove pitch pine painted a dark green. It was always, even in summer, as cold as a larder, and it looked like a privileged horse’s loose box. The bath standing on its cast-iron lion’s feet had a viridian-coloured stain from water that dripped from ancient brass and china taps whose washers were never quite right. She ran a bath, placed the cork mat in position, and bolted the door. The mat had warped so that it wobbled when she stood on it; still, it was to be the children’s bathroom and that wasn’t the kind of thing they’d mind. The Duchy said it was still a perfectly good mat. The Duchy did not believe that baths were meant to be pleasant: the water should be tepid, ‘Much better for you, darling,’ the soap was Lifebuoy, just as the lavatory paper was Izal, ‘More hygienic, darling.’ At thirty-eight Rachel felt that she could have her bath unsuitably hot, and use a cake of Pears’ transparent soap that she kept in her sponge bag. It was the grandchildren who bore the brunt of health and hygiene. It was lovely that they were all coming; it meant that there was masses to do. She adored her three brothers equally, but for different reasons – Hugh because he had been knocked up in the war and was so brave and uncomplaining about it, Edward because he was so wonderfully good-looking, like the Brig when he was young, she thought, and Rupert because he was a marvellous painter, and because he’d had such a tragic time when Isobel died, and because he was such a wonderful father, and sweet to Zoë who was . . . very
young
and chiefly because he made her laugh so much. But she loved them all equally, of course, just as – and also of course – she didn’t have a favourite with the children who were growing up so fast. She had loved them most when they were babies, but they were nice as children, and often said the most killing things. And she got on well with her sisters-in-law, except, perhaps, she didn’t feel she knew Zoë very well yet. It must be difficult for her coming late into such a large, close-knit family with all its customs and traditions and jokes that needed to be explained to her. She resolved to be particularly kind to Zoë – and also to Clary, who was turning into rather a dumpling, poor darling, although she had lovely eyes.

By now she had put on her suspenders, her camisole, her petticoat, her lock-knit knickers and coffee-coloured openwork worsted brown stockings and her brown brogues that Tonbridge polished until they were like treacle toffee. She decided on the blue jersey suit today (blue was far and away her favourite colour) with her new Macclesfield silk shirt – blue with a darker blue stripe. She brushed out her hair and wound it into a loose bun which she pinned to the back of her head without looking in the glass. She strapped on the gold watch the Brig had given her when she was twenty-one, and pinned the garnet brooch that S had given her for a birthday, soon after they had met. She wore it every day – used no other jewellery. Eventually, she took a reluctant peep into the mirror. She had fine skin, eyes that were sharp with intelligence and humour; in fact, her nice, but not remarkable, face – a little like a pallid chimpanzee, she sometimes said – was utterly unselfconscious and entirely without vanity. She tucked a small white handkerchief into the gold chain of her wrist-watch, picked up the lists she had accumulated throughout the previous day and went down to breakfast.

The house had originally been a small farmhouse, built towards the end of the seventeenth century in the typical Sussex manner, its front timber and plaster up to the first floor, which was faced with rose-coloured overlapping tiles. All that remained of it were two small rooms on the ground floor, between which was a steep little staircase that faced the front door that led to three bedrooms linked by two closets. At some time, its owner had been a Mr Home, and it was known simply as Home’s Place. Somewhere in the 1800s this cottage had been transformed into a gentleman’s house. Two large wings had been built on either side of it to form three parts of a square, and here honey-coloured stone had been used with large sash windows and roofed with smooth blue slate. One wing added large dining and drawing rooms, and a third room whose purposes had varied – it was currently used for billiards; the other comprised kitchen, servants’ hall, scullery, pantry, larders, and wine cellar. This addition also provided eight more bedrooms on the first floor. The Victorians completed the north side of the square with a series of small dark rooms, which were used for servants’ quarters, a boot room, a gun room, a room for the vast and noisy boiler, an extra bathroom and a WC below, and nurseries above with the bathroom already mentioned. The result of these various architectural aspirations was a rambling muddle built round a hall with a staircase that led to an open gallery from which the bedrooms could be reached. This open well, with its ceiling just short of the roof, was lit from two glass domes that leaked freakishly in bad weather causing buckets and dogs’ bowls to be placed strategically. It was cold in summer and icy the rest of the year. The house was heated by log and coal fires in the ground-floor rooms: some of the bedrooms had fireplaces, but the Duchy regarded them as unnecessary except for an invalid. There were two bathrooms, one for the women and children on the first floor, one for the men (and servants once a week) on the ground. The servants had their own WC; the rest of the household shared the two that adjoined the bathrooms. Hot water for bedrooms was drawn from the housemaids’ sink on the first floor and carried to rooms in steaming brass cans every morning.